Temporary wafer, panel or layer bonding and debonding are key enabling processes in three dimensional (3D) semiconductor technologies and in miniaturization of electronics and components. Debonding is the act of removing a processed silicon device wafer, panel or layer from a substrate or handling wafer or panel so that the processed silicon device wafer may be added to a 3D stack or used in a system after thinning, processing or miniaturization of the size of the layer. As an example, there exist a number of approaches to the debonding of thinned device wafers: they may be released by exposure to chemical solvents delivered through perforations in the handler, by mechanical peeling from an edge-initiated separation point, or by heating the adhesive to the point where the silicon device wafer may be removed by sheering or peeling. Room-temperature debonding techniques, which include laser-assisted debonding as well as mechanical peeling are gaining wider acceptance than other methods due to their compatibility with standard dicing tape frame mounting and materials. Ultraviolet (UV) laser ablation using an excimer source in combination with an x-y scanning stage has previously been demonstrated to effectively debond wafers that have been bonded using polyimide-based adhesives. At the same time, a number of mechanical debonding approaches have arisen that rely on controlled peeling of a handler from a thinned wafer, for example by engineering the handler to have a central low-adhesion zone, or by the application of a special release layer to the wafer before bonding.
A problem that arises in the context of conventional wafer debonding techniques relates to the costs associated with the bonding adhesive and chemical cleaning.